What is a competitive analysis?
Your buyers compare you with two or three alternatives before they ever talk to sales. A competitive analysis shows you what they see in that comparison, and where you can win it.
Why a competitive analysis matters
A competitive analysis tells you where your marketing dollars will go furthest. If a rival ranks for every high-intent keyword in your category and you rank for none, that’s a content and SEO gap. If AI assistants name three competitors and skip you, that’s an earned media and entity gap. If competitors publish prices and you hide yours, buyers may shortlist them first.
Say you sell lab equipment and lose a deal to a smaller competitor. Your sales team assumes it was price. A competitive analysis shows the competitor ranks first for “benchtop centrifuge for cell culture,” appears in Perplexity’s answer for the same question and runs a comparison page against your product. The buyer read all three before the first call. That’s a marketing problem with a marketing fix.
The six lenses of a marketing competitive analysis
Organic search
Which keywords each rival ranks for, which pages earn the traffic, and the topics where they have depth and you have none.
AI answers
Which brands ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode name for your category questions, and which sources they cite.
Paid media
The search terms rivals bid on, their ad copy and offers, and where they run display, social or video.
Positioning
The promise on each homepage, the buyer each rival speaks to, and the proof they show: reviews, case studies, certifications.
Pricing and offers
Published prices, tiers, free trials, guarantees and how easy it is to get a quote.
Reputation
Review counts and ratings, press coverage, and what forums and communities say about each brand.
How to run a competitive analysis
- Pick the right rivals. Ask sales who you lose deals to. Add the brands that rank for your top keywords and the brands AI assistants name for your category.
- Collect search data. Use an SEO platform to compare keywords, top pages and backlinks. Note which buyer questions each rival answers and you skip.
- Test AI answers. Ask the assistants the questions your buyers ask and record who gets named and cited. Our free AI visibility checker gives a quick read. AI engines also split one question into many sub-queries, which we cover in query fan-out.
- Review ads. Check ad libraries and search results for rival ads, offers and landing pages.
- Compare positioning and pricing. Read each homepage, pricing page and review profile side by side.
- Score and plan. Rank each gap by revenue impact and effort, then assign the top three to owners with dates.
Turning the analysis into a plan
A competitive analysis that ends as a slide deck changes nothing. Close it with a plan that names actions, such as:
- Publish comparison pages for the three rivals buyers mention most.
- Build pages for the five high-intent topics where competitors rank and you’re absent.
- Earn mentions on the review sites and trade outlets AI assistants cite for your category.
- Rewrite the homepage promise around the buyer your rivals overlook.
- Bid on rival brand terms only where your offer is clearly stronger.
Re-run the same checks every quarter. The numbers that matter are share of voice in search and AI answers, quote requests and pipeline from the topics you targeted.
From our work
Here’s how we’d approach a competitive analysis for an aerospace or industrial manufacturer. We’d start with the sales team’s lost-deal list, then pull the queries buyers use from Search Console, including the long conversational ones that look like AI prompts. Our AI query classifier sorts those for us.
Next, we’d run the same buyer questions through the main AI assistants and log which competitors and sources appear. The gaps usually group into three buckets: missing pages, missing third-party mentions and weak proof. Each bucket gets an owner and a 90-day target. Our AI SEO and GEO service runs this as part of onboarding.
Related terms
A competitive analysis draws on strategy, search and paid media. See positioning, value proposition, ideal customer profile, market research, AI share of voice, prompt tracking, keyword research and comparison pages. For paid search research, try our PPC keyword combo tool.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main parts of a competitive analysis?
Who your competitors are, how they position themselves, what they charge, how they reach buyers (search, AI answers, ads, social, PR) and what buyers say about them. A good analysis ends with your gaps, your strengths and a plan.
How do you do a competitive analysis in marketing?
Pick three to five rivals your buyers also consider. Compare search rankings, AI answer visibility, ads, messaging, pricing and reviews. Score each gap by revenue impact, then turn the top gaps into actions with owners and dates.
How often should you do a competitive analysis?
Do a full analysis once a year and a lighter check every quarter. Also run one before a product launch, a pricing change, a site redesign or entry into a new market.
What is a SWOT analysis vs a competitive analysis?
A SWOT lists your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A competitive analysis compares you against named rivals on specific measures. Many teams use the competitive data as the input for a SWOT.
See what buyers see first
We compare you with your real rivals across Google, AI answers and ads, then build the plan that wins the shortlist.
